The Institute for Health Policy Studies, School of Medicine, and the Institute for Health & Aging, School of Nursing, at the University of California, San Francisco, and the Program in Health Services and Policy Analysis at the University of California, Berkeley, propose to continue the UCB/UCSF Health Services Research Training Program for five years. This broad-based, interdisciplinary program uses the resources of both campuses to train health services researchers at the pre and postdoctoral levels. It is part of the major health services research training efforts co-directed by Harold Luft, PhD, at UCSF and Richard Scheffler, PhD at UCB. Dr. Luft will serve as principal investigator of the training program for administrative purposes, but the program is jointly directed by Profs. Luft and Scheffler. The training program provides one of the richest health services research educational environments in the United States. The long-term objective of this program is to train the nation's most qualified health services researchers so that they may contribute to the knowledge of health services issues and inform or participate in decision making on health care issues. Because the nation's health care system is undergoing rapid and fundamental change, there is great need for quality research that can serve as the basis for informed decisions about health policy and thus a demand for well-trained health services researchers. The training program will give trainees an in-depth understanding of the US health care system and the ability to deal with the system from social, political, and economic perspectives through a combination of courses and seminars, mentored hands-on research and one-on-one career advising. Trainees will participate in a program tailored to their needs. They will learn to appropriately use rigorous methodological tools to conduct important interdisciplinary health services research and to make contributions toward understanding the policy implications of the issues they address. Former graduates teach and conduct research in major US and international universities as well as become research leaders in government agencies and private sector organizations. [unreadable] [unreadable] Pre-doctoral trainees enroll in doctoral programs at UCB or UCSF. Many postdoctoral trainees will have clinical backgrounds; others will have doctoral degrees in other fields. The program will continue to increase participation of under-represented minorities in health services research. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]